Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.

A Caldecott Christmas

If this was the 1880’s, you might be eagerly awaiting the newest Randolph Caldecott picture book for Christmas.

British illustrator Randolph Caldecott began his career as a bank clerk, but while he dutifully attended to his work, his leisure was spent in pursuits like fox-hunting across the Cheshire countryside. Letters to his friends were illustrated with humorous sketches, and he sold more finished work to image-hungry newspapers and illustrated magazines until he was finally able to leave his bank position. His light touch brought him some work as a book illustrator as well.

In 1774, Caldecott was chosen to illustrate a new edition of Old Christmas, Washington Irving’s lighthearted story of a Christmas visit to an English country house. It is a portrait of an even earlier era — when horses were transportation as well as recreation and before the railway had dethroned the stagecoach in England.

The coach was crowded, both inside and out, with passengers, who, by their talk, seemed principally bound to the mansions of relations or friends to eat the Christmas dinner. It was loaded also with hampers of game, and baskets and boxes of delicacies; and hares hung dangling their long ears above the coachman’s box – presents from distant friends for the impending feast. I had three fine rosy-cheeked schoolboys for my fellow passengers inside, full of the buxom health and manly spirit which I have observed in the children of this country. They were returning home for the holidays in high glee, and promising themselves a world of enjoyment. It was delightful to hear the gigantic plans of pleasure of the little rogues, and the impracticable feats they were to perform during their six weeks’ emancipation from the abhorred thralldom of book, birch and pedagogue. They were full of anticipations of the meeting with the family and household, down to the very cat and dog’ and of the joy they were to give their little sisters by the presents with which their pockets were crammed: but the meeting to which they seemed to look forward with the greatest impatience was with Bantam, which I found to be a pony, and according to their talk, possessed of more virtues than any steed since the days of Bucephalus. How he could trot! How he could run! And such leaps as he would take –there was not a hedge in the whole country that he could not clear.

The first place where he attracted my attention was in the churchyard on Sunday’ where he sat on a tombstone after service, with his hat a little on one side, holding forth to a small circle of auditors, and, as I presumed, expounding the law and the prophets until, on drawing a little nearer, I found he was only expatiating on the merits of a brown horse.

The popularity of the new edition of Old Christmas broadened Randolph Caldecott’s opportunities and made him relatively prosperous. When he was invited by apublisher George Routledge to produce a children’s book, he wisely offered to take on half the risk, as well as half the return. That book came out in 1878, and marked the beginning of an annual series that lasted until his untimely death in 1886.

The Diverting History of John Gilpin illustrates a text by William Cowper, a depressive eighteenth-century poet whose sense of humor seems to have been his saving grace. The poem created an ideal showcase for Caldecott’s storehouse of country imagery and lighthearted touch.

It tells the story of a linen draper who is to meet his wife in Edmonton for their anniversary dinner. His horse John has other ideas.

Now see him mounted once again
Upon his nimble steed,
Full slowly pacing o’er the stones,
With caution and good heed.

But finding soon a smoother road
Beneath his well-shod feet,
The snorting beast began to trot,
Which galled him in his seat.

“So, fair and softly!” John he cried,
But John he cried in vain;
That trot became a gallop soon,
In spite of curb and rein.

So stooping down, as needs he must
Who cannot sit upright,
He grasped the mane with both his hands,
And eke with all his might.

His horse, who never in that sort
Had handled been before,
What thing upon his back had got,
Did wonder more and more.

Away went Gilpin, neck or nought,
Away went hat and wig;
He little dreamt, when he set out,
Of running such a rig.

You can read the rest of poem online and see more of the illustrations at a website created by descendants of the Caldecott family.

Original editions of the books, published for a shilling apiece, are now quite expensive, but there are periodic facsimile editions brought out, as well as older reprints on eBay and used book sites like Abebooks, if you care to follow his prescription. You can also find most of them digitally at The Baldwin Library of Children’s Literatures,

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.